When you have, let’s say, four tasks to finish, which one do you work on first?

Obviously, the most important and urgent task first. Next come those urgent but not so important tasks and those important but not so urgent tasks. Tasks that are “perceived” to be neither very important nor urgent tend to be left till the end, that is, if they ever get finished at all.

The problem is, as you may have guessed now, sometimes your perceptions of what is important or urgent are not very accurate.

Let’s say you have been stuck at the same weights for bench press for a few weeks now. That means you have a task of trying to figure out the reason why you’ve been stuck there for so long. Unfortunately, that task is only one of the many different tasks you have to deal with in your busy everyday life. Now, the question is: When are you going to finish that task (i.e. how important and urgent do you perceive this task to be)?

Your perception of the importance and urgency of this task clearly depends on your knowledge and understanding of training for muscle for an ectomorph. Specifically, if you are not aware of the fact that you HAVE to be able to gain weights on your bench press EVERY time you bench (once or twice a week, depending on whether you are a beginner or intermediate), being stuck at the same weights for a few weeks doesn’t seem like such a big deal to you. Also, at the right rep range (8-10), not being able to increase the weights means you are not giving your body enough stress to stimulate muscle growth (i.e. you are not getting any bigger). Not knowing this, you may not find it so urgent to figure out why you’ve been stuck for so long (two or three weeks are extremely long given that your goal is to gain 15 pounds of muscle in 15 weeks).

So how do you fix this problem? Here are my suggestions:

• Carefully read these three great books on training: Starting Strength, Beyond Brawn, and Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle. You will get a comprehensive understanding of training just with three books, and will be able to have correct perceptions of the importance and urgency of any task related to training from then on.
• It takes a while to completely digest all the teachings from these books (or any other books or forum on training). In other words, it takes a while for you to develop the proper perceptions that we’ve been talking about. Until then, what to do?
  • It is advisable that you make training your top 1 or 2 priorities in life (three months is best).
  • With that, everything is easily put into perspective: anything related to training must be done first because it is your top priority in your life now (for these 3 months).
  • Here’s the post explaining in more details why you should make training your top priority in life for a while.